ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
The old photo shows one of the Boston's remarkable lost buildings, the Maverick House hotel, in East Boston's Maverick Square. The Maverick was the Airport Hilton of its era. Sailing ships and, later on, Cunarders and other steam liners arrived from Europe and docked in East Boston,just as airplanes land there at Logan today. Exhausted passengers would put up for night or two at the Maverick before continuing on into Boston or beyond. The waterside locati...

ABOUT THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPHS
The old photo shows one of the Boston's remarkable lost buildings, the Maverick House hotel, in East Boston's Maverick Square. The Maverick was the Airport Hilton of its era. Sailing ships and, later on, Cunarders and other steam liners arrived from Europe and docked in East Boston,just as airplanes land there at Logan today. Exhausted passengers would put up for night or two at the Maverick before continuing on into Boston or beyond. The waterside location enabled the hotel to double as a summer resort. It was built in 1855 and demolished in 1924, the year a new subway to Boston - the beginning of today's Blue Line - replaced the former trolley cars, easing the trip into town.

The photo dates from the 1860s; the architecture, with its tall hooded windows, is in the Italianate style. Maverick Square is named for Samuel Maverick - "the founder of East Boston" - who moved from Chelsea in 1630, six years before there was a Harvard. A descendant, another Samuel Maverick, helped found Texas, where he owned a ranch more than 15 times the area of today's Boston. His calves, which he refused to brand, became known as "mavericks." The new photo is a lesson in the destruction wrought by the automobile on the American city. The car-repair shop, on an asphalt lawn beneath two trees of cobra-headed lights, is a sad successor to the memorable hotel.